by Shelby Gates
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t want to admit how badly her ankle hurt.
He unpacked the bag and spread out two striped towels right next to one another. He helped her settle on to the towel before sitting down next to her.
She eyed him for a long time.
“What?” he asked. “What did I do now?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Which is what I’m not getting. I’ve been a royal bitch for the last twenty-four hours and you’ve been nothing but unfailingly nice to me. Why?”
His toes were on the edge of the towel and he dug them into the sugary sand. “I don’t know.”
“Bull,” she said, pressing. “Why?”
He stared out at the water, the sunlight dancing on the waves. “I’ve just missed you, Claire.”
ELEVEN
His stomach lurched as soon as he said the words. He wasn’t sure he’d ever said them out loud in the ten years since he’d seen her, even though they were always in his head. But now they were out there, hanging in the air between them and he couldn’t take them back.
“Oh,” she said, stammering a bit. “Okay. Well. Thank you. For being so nice to me when I don’t deserve it.”
“You’ve had a rough couple days,” he said, happy to move away from his personalization of the conversation. “You deserve some niceness.”
She made a face like she didn’t believe him and he couldn’t help but smile. He remembered that look, too. Never believing in herself. Never believing she deserved anything good to come her way. Some things did not change.
“So I wanna know what’s been going on with you,” he said. “And not the superficial stuff, either. I wanna know what you’ve been doing.”
She shifted her weight on the towel and pretended to examine her toe. He knew he was making her uncomfortable. She’d never been one to open easily, to share her life with her friends. But if he didn’t push, they’d sit there and talk about the weather and their classmates and nothing that mattered.
Which, for him, was her.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I don’t have a clue what your life has been like for the past decade,” he said. And then smiling, he added, “And because I shared with you.”
She took a deep breath and expelled a long sigh. “I’m divorced.”
“Divorced?” Why in the hell would anyone ever divorce her? Unless they were insane and blind.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” she muttered.
“No, no,” he said. “I was just…surprised.”
“Sounds like you’re judging.”
“Nope. Not at all.” He smiled. “I promise.”
She sighed again. “OK. So, yeah. Divorced. My marriage was a mistake and I knew it right away and it imploded immediately.”
“You know, it’s not a disease,” he said. “It’s not like you’ve been diagnosed with divorce and it’s inoperable.”
She smiled. “Sometimes that’s exactly what it feels like. Like everyone tilts their head to the side, gives you this sympathetic look and says ‘I’m so sorry.’”
He nodded.
“But I’m not sorry in the least,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry I agreed to get married when I knew it was all wrong, but I’m not sorry to be divorced from him. It’s just one of those things that you don’t think is going to happen to you and then it feels like utter failure when you tell them.”
He wasn’t divorced, but, man, could he relate. That look of sympathy that really meant “Sorry, you failed.” Yeah, he’d gotten more than a few of those.
“So there’s that,” she said, brushing at her shins. “And I was just fired from a really crappy job.”
“I’ve been fired from plenty of jobs,” he said.
She smiled, but he thought it was more for herself than for him. “Yeah, but I’ll bet you at least got fired from jobs you wanted.”
She was right. He’d had numerous assignments where he’d just clashed with an editor or never found the voice and was asked off a project. It was part of the territory.
“You’ve found your niche,” Claire said. “You have a career. I’ve wandered. Which I’m okay with. It’ll show up someday. But in the meantime, I’ve still got to earn a living. Which I was doing…as an admin. assistant for, quite possibly, the world’s most vile human being.”
Griffin laughed. He loved hearing her talk. The inflection. The sarcasm. He’d always wondered if he’d ever get to hear it again so it was somewhat surreal to be sitting on a beach with her, listening to her.
“He ran this company that produces language videos,” she explained, pulling at the towel beneath her. “You know, learn Spanish in like a month. Guy makes a fortune and paid me really, really well for what I was doing. But he was a complete ass. Anything I couldn’t do, he’d immediately hone in on and ask me to do just that. So I’d have to spend my nights figuring out how to do whatever he wanted done just so I could show up the next day and be competent. He loved seeing me squirm, I think. Making me feel stupid.”
Claire had always been the smartest person he’d known. She could grasp nearly anything quicker than everyone else and, back in high school, it bugged Griffin. He was too competitive and so was she and it drove him up a wall when she figured something out before he could. But he’d secretly liked that, too, that his girlfriend was smarter than everyone else.
If he just hadn’t been so stupid…
“He was also a chauvinist pig,” she said. “Always made lewd remarks, always inappropriate. In every single way. He’d tell me I needed to show more cleavage or wear some stilettos or ask if I had a boyfriend, or whatever. I finally told him I’d had enough.”
“So he fired you?”
“Yep.”
“Claire, you could sue the crap out of him,” he said, genuinely angry for her and frustrated that he hadn’t been there to help her. It was totally unreasonable, but that was how he’d always felt toward her. Wanting to protect her, share with her, kick the crap out of anyone who even looked at her.
She waved a hand in the air. “I wanted out. It wasn’t for me, anyway. And I don’t need the hassle of more court dates.”
“Court dates?”
She sighed and her shoulders sank. “The divorce. It was a hassle. He didn’t want it. Fought me for a little bit. Made me feel awful.”
He wanted to reach out to her, but he held back. For two reasons. One, he wasn’t sure if it was his place. And, two, he knew that just touching her when she looked so fantastic in that bikini would turn him into the pervert he was trying very hard not to be.
“Jared,” she said, glancing at him. “My ex. Jared. Nice guy. Met him my last year in college. We dated for a year and he asked me to marry him. As the words came out of his mouth, my heart said no, but my mouth said yes.”
“Why?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I was lonely. He was safe. Comfortable. I hoped maybe it would end up being more.”
Griffin felt like a jerk for being glad that it hadn’t.
“But it didn’t,” she said. “And it was apparent right away. We were just different and I didn’t love him and he knew it. Somehow, I was able to fake it when we were dating, but I couldn’t as soon as we were married.”
He wanted to tell her, right then, tell her he knew exactly what she was talking about, but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth.
“And I hurt him,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “Six months to the day of our wedding, I told him I wanted a divorce. At first, he was sad, wanted to know how to fix it. I told him there was nothing to fix. Then, he just got incredibly pissed off. I didn’t blame him, but it went bad in a hurry. He refused to sign papers, wouldn’t give me my things.” She sighed. “Was seriously awful. We don’t even speak now. I hate that I hurt him.”
Again, Griffin wanted to reach out, tell her he was sorry, comfort her in some way. But he was afraid it would come off wrong and she’d look at him like he was crazy. So he sat there and lis
tened, his fists clenched tight.
“And now,” she said, choking out a laugh. “I swear, it feels like I am the biggest screw-up that’s ever walked the Earth.”
“That’s not true.”
“But it’s how I feel,” she said. “It’s absolutely how I feel. And I hate it.” She made what he could only describe as a disgusted sound with herself.
And then he saw the tear escape from below her sunglasses.
This time, he didn’t think and he didn’t hesitate. He put his arm around her shoulders and she immediately moved into him. He was immediately transported to ten years ago, sitting in the same position, thinking how her body curved into his, how his arm exactly fit around her shoulders, how her hair smelled.
His lips grazed her earlobe and he pulled back a fraction, not wanting to startle her, not wanting to give her the wrong impression.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his mouth almost touching her skin.
He meant that for a lot of things, but it wasn’t the right time to delve into all that. He hoped she’d give him the chance, and he hoped he’d have the guts, to say what he’d wanted to say for ten years.
She pulled her head up, staring at him from behind the glasses and he didn’t know what she was thinking.
Then she leaned up and touched her lips to his and suddenly it didn’t matter. He closed his eyes and kissed her back and fireworks exploded, just like they had ten years earlier.
TWELVE
Griffin’s hand touched her knee and she pulled away, taking a much needed breath.
Why are you kissing him? she thought wildly.
Well, because he was incredibly handsome and she’d been in love with him for ten years and holy crap, he hadn’t forgotten how to kiss. It felt like there was a fire lit in every part of her body.
But you are making a mistake. He’ll crush you again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, twisting away from him. “I’m sorry. That was dumb.”
“That was dumb?” he asked, confused. “Dumb?”
She pushed herself off the towel and into a standing position, putting her weight on the one good ankle. “We should go.”
“What the hell, Claire?”
You don’t want to be his rebound.
“We should just go,” she said. “Will you hand me the crutches?”
He sat there for a minute, staring at her. Then he shook his head, his mouth flattened into an angry line, and got up with a flourish. “Yeah. Sure.”
He pulled the crutches off the end of the towel and thrust them at her.
“Thanks,” she said quietly. She’d always hated his anger, the way it flashed so quickly, but she couldn’t blame him this time.
He wadded the towels up, not bothering to shake them loose of sand and jammed them into his backpack. He strapped it over his shoulders. “Let’s go.”
She thought he might just storm ahead and leave her, but he didn’t. He did manage to stay at an arm’s distance, though. He didn’t offer to help her through the sand this time, but she didn’t expect him to. He marched next to her, his eyes straight ahead, his jaw locked.
The one time she decided to be impetuous and this is where it had gotten her. He’d been nothing but great to her and it wasn’t like he’d pulled back when she kissed him. No, in fact, he’d moved closer, kissed her back and she’d very nearly gotten lost in it.
But she didn’t want to get hurt again. She didn’t want to be a rebound for something he still hadn’t even told her about and she didn’t think she could take losing him twice in one lifetime.
They walked in silence until they reached the ship.
“You going to the room?” he asked.
She couldn’t read anything in his expression. She didn’t know what he wanted, but she was tired and she wanted to lay down. “Yeah, but I…”
“Cool,” he said, heading up the ramp. “I’ll see you later.”
THIRTEEN
Griffin’s arms hammered the water as he swam up to the bar. He perched himself on one of the underwater stools, wiped the pool water from his face, and motioned at the bartender, who raised an eyebrow.
“Corona, please,” Griffin said, his chest heaving.
The bartender nodded, pulled one from the fridge, popped the top and set it on the bar.
“Thanks.” Griffin gave him his room number and the bartender moved away to open up his tab at the computer.
Griffin swiveled so he could see the pool and downed half the beer. He’d headed straight for the pool after leaving Claire. He’d swam lap after lap, hoping to burn off some of the frustration Claire’s kiss and reaction had injected into him.
Fail.
He took another swig from the bottle, watching a mom play with her two young kids. The two little ones wore floaties on their arms and were taking turns jumping in the pool to her. She’d catch them, slide them back to the wall and wait for the next one to fly at her. All three were laughing, happy, carefree, emotions he wished he was feeling at the moment.
Claire had surprised him with the kiss. Pleasantly. He hadn’t had the guts to kiss her himself and she’d made the first move. And then she’d turned into a damn ice queen, pulling back from him and treating him like an insect that had just taken a bit of her flesh. She’d called it dumb.
What the hell?
He finished the beer and raised a hand at the bartender, who was already delivering the second.
He leaned back and set his elbows on the bar, the beer dangling from his right hand. The kiss hadn’t been dumb. It had been electric. No way it had just been him to feel that. Impossible.
He shook his head. Had he really read her all wrong?
He sipped at the beer. The one thing he’d hoped for coming on the cruise was for Claire to be single and that wish had been granted. All of his hemming and hawing about whether or not to come for fear that she’d show up with someone or be involved or married was unfounded. She was single. Troubled by her divorce, but he didn’t blame her and he didn’t hold it against her. The only thing that he wanted was for her to be free so he could have his shot.
And maybe he didn’t deserve the shot, he thought as he took another long sip. He’d screwed up in high school. He couldn’t take that back, but he did want to try and explain it to her. And he sure as hell wanted to tell her what had gone on in his life over the last year, make her see exactly why he was there on the ship.
He didn’t care if she was mad at him about the kiss. She was going to hear him out. He was going to take his shot. And if she wasn’t interested? Well, he’d deal with that when the time came. But he wasn’t going to leave with another regret tied to Claire Woodward. It was now or never.
“There you are!” Emily’s voice called out and he immediately regretted the second beer.
He’d missed her on the pool deck, lost in his reverie, and she slid into the pool near the mother and the kids. She kept her head out of the water, her long blonde hair flowing behind her, and swam over to him.
“You’re alone,” she said, hopping onto the stool next to him.
“Yep.”
“Wanna buy me a drink?” she asked, smiling at him.
Not really. “Sure.”
He waved at the bartender and Emily ordered a daiquiri that the bartender had in front of her in about thirty seconds time. She wrapped her red lips around the straw, took a small drink and nodded approvingly. “That’s yummy.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Where’s Claire?” she asked, scanning the pool.
“No clue.”
“Her ankle okay?”
“Think so.”
She took another sip from the drink. “Hey, I’m sorry about the beach. I just freaked. Water makes me nervous and I totally overreacted.”
“Not a problem,” Griffin said.
“And thanks for the drink.”
He nodded. But, God, did he hate women who asked if you’d buy them a drink, like they were too incompetent to do it themselves. Claire never would
have done that. Hell, she’d gone nuts when he’d bought her a drink without asking her.
“So, I should pay you back,” Emily said.
“What?”
“Pay you back,” she said. “For dealing with me out there in the water and for the drink.”
“It’s fine, Emily.”
“But I want to.”
He sighed. “Okay.”
Her hand found his thigh beneath the water. “I was thinking maybe we could go and talk about how. You know, back in my room?”
Griffin looked at her. There was no denying she was a knockout. The killer hair, the blue eyes, the body she’d kept since high school and apparently loved to show off, given the fact that her bikini seemed to be woven out of dental floss. She’d turned every male head in the pool when she’d gotten in.
He turned to the bartender and signaled for the check. The guy brought him the tab and Griffin signed off on it and slid it back across the bar.
Emily smiled at him, her nails digging into his thigh, her tongue licking her lips.
No, you couldn’t deny she was a knockout.
But she was absolutely not Claire.
